Having in the previous letter (I:L1:4) already employed language associated with Milton's
Satan, here Mary Shelley directly echoes his description:

     his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrencht, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
Waiting revenge.
-- I.600-604

The author's purpose seems not to be one of branding this crew with a diabolic association
(though it is true that they will later become united in rebellion against their master),
but rather this early on in the novel to plant motifs that will serve as unifying
structural and thematic devices as Mary Shelley begins to interweave multiple narrative
lines. In this case the association of the heroic and the Satanic will provide a perspective
in which the reader will later frame both Victor Frankenstein and his Creature.

Although Mary Shelley publishes this revision of her novel pseudonymously, as by "The
Author of The Last Man, Perkin Warbeck, &C. &C.," she writes as though she had signed
her full name to the title page, speaking familiarly of her husband toward the end
of the Introduction as "Shelley" (see I:Intro:7) and here casting her parents, William
Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, as almost legendary, if historical, figures whom she
need not bother to name. Constrained to keep the Shelley name out of the press by
the meager allowance Sir Timothy Shelley had reluctantly settled upon his grandson,
and thus remaining, as her opening paragraph indicates, "very averse to bringing [her]self
forward in print" (see I:Intro:1), Mary Shelley nonetheless goes out of her way here
to establish her major credentials as an artist and her strong claim to public notice.
An appearance of modesty to cloak an unladylike presumption is a standard ploy of
women writers at this time.

Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). The reference is almost certainly to his last work, The
Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society: A Poem, with Philosophical Notes, published
posthumously in 1803.

Its cryptic citation in the opening paragraph of the Preface testifies to the major
importance of this work for the conceptual structuring of Frankenstein, particularly
in the electromagnetic linkage of the scientific concerns of Victor Frankenstein and
Robert Walton, as well as for the conspicuous and strange polar setting of the novel.
The relevant note is the twelfth in the appendix.

What exactly Percy Bysshe Shelley is referring to in his glancing citation of The
Temple of Nature is harder to discern. That he knew the work intimately can be discerned
by how much its form, as well as its science, contribute to the underlying conception
of Queen Mab (1813) and its two-book redaction published in the Alastor volume in
March 1816, "The Daemon of the World." In respect to Frankenstein, he is probably
thinking of Darwin's notion of creation as occuring from the dynamic interaction of
polar opposites in Book I.227ff, or its extension in the notion of life and death
as interacting forces in Book IV.375ff. Likewise, of relevance (though wholly erroneous
in its suppositions) is the first of the Additional Notes in the appendix, on "Spontaneous
Vitality of Microscopic Animals." Darwin also has a curious exposition of male reproduction
in nature without the intercession of females: see Book II, section III, somewhat
elaborated in the eighth of the Additional Notes.

The theme of dejection is a significant component of "dark" Romanticism. The most
influential exploration of it in the canon of British Romanticism is that found in
"Dejection: An Ode" by Coleridge, whose "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" has already
figured in the structure of the novel (I:L2:6). Of the major Romantic poets (besides
Percy Bysshe Shelley), Coleridge seems to have had the greatest impact on Mary Shelley's
writing in Frankenstein.

This may be a premonition of Victor's own complicity in William's death, or it can
be read as one of several instances where we observe on his part a chronic hesitancy
to act. This will return in the third volume as a near-paralysis of the will. It is
perhaps a natural reaction of one who has pursued one course of action with compulsive
energy (see I:3:9) and then finds himself unable to undo or even cope with the result.

In the lower circles of the Inferno, Dante represents sinners grotesquely transfigured
by the nature of their sins, as their physical presence imitates the moral condition
of their souls. For Victor to invoke Dante in this manner, however, is to remind us
that in his medieval Christian universe no one is born damned, but rather must actively
estrange the self from God's merciful love in order to embrace damnation as a principle
of one's being. Victor also unwittingly raises the disturbing question that will be
underscored in the ensuing paragraph: in a world where man plays God, what is the
state of damnation and what constitutes hell?

Against the very mundane cruelty of a miscarriage of human justice, Victor seems to
feel obliged to inflate the terms as a means of assuaging his guilt. His rhetoric
transcendentalizes his Creature, who can thus be conceived as beyond human suffering,
as maliciously sporting with life. With a nice irony, the Creature will use exactly
the same terms on Victor when they later meet: see II:2:7 and note.

This is the term that, as his narrative proceeds into Volume 3, Victor will increasingly
use to denominate his Creature. But to have it thus introduced here without any preparation,
and in this peculiar period spelling, is to raise a serious question as to what exactly
Victor may intend by the term. Walton's interpolation, "as he called him," emphasizes
the importance of perspective in any such definition and may even indicate his own
lack of assurance about what is meant by Victor's usage.

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1755) is uncharacteristically reductive in its definition:

DEMON, n.s. [dæmon, Latin; daimôn.] A spirit; generally an evil spirit; a devil.

The Oxford English Dictionary, in contrast, exhibits the full range and complexity
of the word's history. (The examples are here abridged.)

DEMON

demon 1. Also 6-9 dæmon. In form, and in sense 1 a, a. L. dæmon (med.L. demon) spirit,
evil spirit, a. Gr. dai'mwn divinity, genius, tutelary deity. But in sense 1 b and
2, put for L. dæmonium, Gr. daimo'nion, neuter of daimo'nioj adj. '(thing) of divine
or dæmonic nature or character', which is used by the LXX, N. Test., and Christian
writers, for 'evil spirit'. Cf; Fr. dimon (in Oresme 14th c. dimones); also 13th c.
demoygne = Pr. demoni, Ital., Sp. demonio, repr. L. dæmonium, Gr. daimo'nion.

1.

a. In ancient Greek mythology (= dai'mwn): A supernatural being of a nature intermediate
between that of gods and men; an inferior divinity, spirit, genius (including the
souls or ghosts of deceased persons, esp. deified heroes). Often written dæmon for
distinction from sense 2.

b. Sometimes, particularly, An attendant, ministering, or indwelling spirit; a genius.
(Chiefly in references to the so-called 'dæmon of Socrates'; Socrates himself claimed
to be guided, not by a dai'mwn or dæmon, but by a daimo'nion, divinum quiddam (Cicero),
a certain divine principle or agency, an inward monitor or oracle. It was his accusers
who represented this as a personal dæmon, and the same was done by the Christian Fathers
(under the influence of sense 2), whence the English use of the word, as in the quotations.
See tr. Zeller's Socrates iv. 73; Riddell, Apology of Plato, Appendix A.).

2. An evil spirit.

a. (Representing daimo'nion of the LXX and N.T. (rarely dai'mwn); in Vulgate dæmonium,
dæmon). Applied to the idols or gods of the heathen, and to the 'evil' or 'unclean
spirits' by which demoniacs were possessed or actuated. A Jewish application of the
Greek word, anterior to Christianity. Daimo'nia is used several times by the LXX to
render shedim 'lords, idols', and secirim 'hairy ones' (satyrs or he-goats), the latter
also rendered ma'taia 'vain things'. It is also frequent in the Apocrypha (esp. in
Tobit), and in the N.T., where in one instance (Matt. viii. 31) dai'monej occurs in
same sense. In the Vulgate generally rendered dæmonium, pl. -ia, but once in O.T.
(Lev. xvii. 7), and in 10 places in N.T. (8 in St. Matthew) dæmon, pl. -es. These
words are indiscriminately translated deofol in the Ags. Gospels, feend or deuil in
Wyclif, and in all the 16-17th c. versions devil; the Revisers of 1881-5 substitute
demons in Deut. and Psalms, but in the N.T. retain devil, -s, in the text, with the
literal translation demon, -s, in the margin. Quite distinct from this is the word
properly translated 'Devil', dia'boloj, which is not used in the plural. It is owing
to this substitution of devil in the Bible versions, that demon is not found so early
in this, as in the popular sense b, which arose out of this identification.

b. In general current use: An evil spirit; a malignant being of superhuman nature;
a devil.

c. Applied to a person (animal or agency personified), of malignant, cruel, terrible,
or destructive nature, or of hideous appearance. (Cf. devil.)

d. fig. An evil passion or agency personified. spec. an alcoholic drink. Also attrib.

e. Applied to a being of superhuman or 'diabolical' energy, skill, etc. (cf. 3 a spec.);
also to an action, etc.

Accordingly, although Victor Frankenstein obviously wishes to "demonize" his Creature
as a kind of fiend or devil (as in 2b), in both his actual encounters with him, the
Creature acts as a kind of conscience in the sense of 1a (II:2:7, III:3:13), reminding
him of his duties as a creator. In later chapters of the novel, where a complex doubling
effect occurs, it seems at times as if the Creature were, indeed, an inner genius,
as in 1b. The Creature does, of course, have the hideous appearance defined in 2c,
and he exhibits the extraordinary energy and skill noted in 2e, aspects that remind
us that Victor himself fabricated his Creature to be superhuman. This sense of his
own responsibility for the Creature's nature is exactly what is canceled by Victor's
calling him a demon.

The initial posing of a highly problematic theme of the novel, the thirst for knowledge
as an end in itself. The same theme implicates "Alastor," Percy Bysshe Shelley's major
poem written in 1815, and published in March of the next year, four months before
Mary Shelley conceived the idea for Frankenstein, as well as William Godwin's first
great success in fiction, The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1792): whose fourth paragraph
begins, "The spring of action which, perhaps more than any other, characterised the
whole train of my life, was curiosity."

Mary Shelley reverts to the characteristic (and problem) of human curiosity first
broached in Walton's Letter (I:L1:2) and continued in the opening chapter of Victor's
narrative. Late in the novel Walton's curiosity will also function to establish for
the first and only time a momentary bridge between Victor's Creature and humanity
(III:WC:38).